Voices shouted, then a gun went off so close it made her ears ring.Then heavy and suffocating silence.Her chest heaved and Tessa found she couldn’t breathe for a few seconds.
Slow, steady footsteps approached the door again.Even through the ringing in her ears and the terror clawing at her ribs, Tessa felt it.The shift in the air and the way the space seemed to tighten, like the world itself was bracing.
Her breath hitched painfully.The handle turned and the door exploded open with a violent crack, slamming against the wall.Tessa broke before she even saw his face.
“Brick.”His name left her like a prayer and a sob tangled together.
He filled the doorway like something summoned out of wrath and devotion both.Blood streaked down his forearm in dark, tacky trails.His knuckles were torn and red.The shoulder of his cut was ripped, the leather hanging loose.
For one terrifying second, all she could see was the damage, and her heart nearly stopped.Then his eyes found hers and everything inside her shattered.
They were black with violence that hadn’t finished burning.With terror that he’d been too late.With something so raw and fiercely protective it stole the breath from her lungs.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.The world narrowed to the space between them.Then he crossed the room in two strides.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
Brick gripped the chains, fingers brutal and shaking all at once.Metal shrieked as he wrenched at the lock with savage force.Once, twice, then it finally snapped free.He tore the second chain loose just as her legs buckled beneath her.
He caught her without hesitation.Tessa collapsed into him like the world had finally stopped spinning.Tessa wrapped her arms around him hard, desperate, as if he might disappear if she didn’t hold on tight enough.
Brick crushed her to his chest, his hold unyielding.He dropped his forehead to her hair.He shuddered once, violently, like a man barely holding himself together.
“I’ve got you,” he said hoarsely.“You’re safe.You’re safe now.”
The words broke something open inside her.Her knees trembled and her strength vanished.She sobbed into his chest, the sound ripped out of her like it had been waiting behind a dam of fear for hours.
“I thought you’d come alone,” she whispered against him.“I was so scared...”
His jaw flexed hard against her temple.
“You really think I’d ever leave you like that?”he said quietly.
She shook her head, fingers fisting helplessly in the back of his vest.“I didn’t want you to die for me.”
“Too late,” he murmured roughly.“Already decided I would.”
Her breath caught painfully at those words.She pulled back just enough to look at him.
Blood streaked his skin.Sweat darkened his hair at the temples.Rage still lived in the set of his shoulders.Fear flickered in his eyes, but beneath it all there was love.Raw and unhidden.
“I love you,” she whispered.
Brick touched her face, cradling her cheeks with a gentleness that felt impossibly out of place in the wreckage around them.He brushed away her tears with hands that had just ended lives.
“I know,” he said softly.“And that’s why they’re dead.We’ve got Dillon, too.He’s unharmed.”
Relief filled her at those words.Boots thundered in the hall.
King’s voice cut through the haze of violence and emotion.“We’re clear!Let’s move!”
Brick didn’t hesitate.He scooped Tessa up into his arms like she weighed nothing, holding her tight against his chest.She buried her face into the curve of his neck, trembling, inhaling the scent of oil and leather and him like proof she was alive.
As he carried her out through shattered glass, past blood-smeared concrete and fallen bodies, past the echo of war he’d carved through for her, the truth settled deep into her bones.
Brick hadn’t just come for her, he had gone to war for her, and nothing on earth would ever make her forget it.
